“Rich, can I come with you?” It was Bender.
Walter startled. Bender had already taken one of his well-publicized long shots in the case, and missed. His speculative bust of what the boy’s father might look like had gone out on America ’s Most Wanted and a thousand other media outlets like a note in a bottle. It had been a decade, and nothing came back.
“Frank, what the hell you talkin’ about? You’ll be haunting me soon. Even more than you do now.”
Bender stared at him, grinning like a cat, a cat with a secret. He said nothing.
Walter flushed. “See,” he said, turning to the commissioner, the judge of truth and lies. “What’d I tell you? He’s such a flimflam artist I won’t believe he’s sick until he’s in the grave. He’s the type who would make a deal with the devil and beat it.”
“You guys.” Fleisher smiled and shook his head. “The greatest show on Earth.”
The three of them stood in the parking lot. The night was overcast, no stars. From the great house came the sound of voices, men talking. The lights were going out. The river was black, indistinct, an inky mass with land and sky. When the moon flickered on the water you could see it, wide and slow, moving in the dark.
Bender said he’d gotten full veteran’s benefits now from his time with the Navy, just as if he’d retired from it, because of the cancer.
Fleisher grinned. “Frank, with your fucking luck, you’ll get recalled to Afghanistan.”
They all laughed.
Fleisher looked up. He felt a touch of winter. “A beautiful night.” Bender’s voice was reverent. “It’s the form of nature. Can you see it, the harmony?”
“Bah.” Walter blew cigarette smoke into the night air.
“I’ll pray for you, Frank.” Fleisher and Michelle were getting in the car. “We all will. We love you.”
“Thanks, Bill.” He waved.
It was just the two of them, still standing.
The thin man coughed. Bender looked pale to him in the moonlight.
“I still won’t pray for you,” Walter said. “But I’ll cross my fingers.”
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS •
The Murder Room is a history of the pro bono crime-fighters of the Vidocq Society of Philadelphia, focusing on the federal agent, forensic psychologist, and forensic artist who founded the society and more than a dozen murder cases Vidocq Society Members (VSMs) investigated from 1990 to 2009. The story is drawn from hundreds of interviews with homicide detectives, federal agents, forensic pathologists, anthropologists, dentists, and many other forensic scientists; police and court records; newspapers, magazines, television, radio tapes and transcripts, diaries, Web sites, e-mails, books, and theses, published and unpublished. In a story as complex as this one, my debts are great.
My deepest gratitude goes to federal agent, private eye, and Vidocq Society commissioner William Fleisher; forensic artist Frank Bender; and forensic psychologist and criminal profiler Richard Walter. The Murder Room is the story of the Vidocq Society but it is also a partial biography of these three men, the society’s founders. With Fleisher, leading the way as commissioner, Bender and Walter gave me unprecedented access to the Vidocq Society, including its luncheon investigations in the Murder Room, board meetings, case files and archives, and discussions not open to the public. The three men made themselves available for more than a thousand hours of interviews across more than five years.
With Fleisher and Walter, I attended a forensics-law enforcement program at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, featuring two days of lectures by Vidocq Society Members, including Haskell Askin on forensic dentistry, Fleisher on truth detection, and Walter on the personality subtypes of sex murderers-a lecture I heard Walter give many times, to universities, at forensic conferences, and to more than a hundred prosecutors at the Philadelphia district attorney’s office. The three founders also gave me access to their personal lives, from Christmas dinners and New Year’s Eve parties to the people closest to them. Special thanks for the time and recollections of Michelle Fleisher and Elizabeth Fleisher; Gloria Alvarado, the Vidocq Society’s office secretary; Jan Bender; Joan Crescenz; the gifted editor Vanessa Bender; Nan and Morris Baker; Beverly Fraser; and Richard Walter’s extended family.
I am in debt to the Vidocq Society board of directors for its support, especially former U.S. Customs special agent Joseph M. O’Kane; former assistant U.S. attorney Barbara Cohan-Saavedra; polygraph examiner Nathan J. Gordon; and former Philadelphia major-crimes homicide detective Ed Gaughan. Gordon and Gaughan, Fleisher’s partners in the Keystone Intelligence Network detective agency, were particularly helpful in reconstructing old cases. Board chairman Frederick A. Bornhofen, the former naval intelligence officer, gave generously of his time explaining the history of the society, as did O’Kane. William Gill III, the former U.S. Treasury agent and supervisor, former IRS inspection agent Benjamin Redmond, ex-Philadelphia chief inspector of detectives John Maxwell, and English professor and former hostage negotiator Donald Weinberg were also generous with their time and recollections.
I would like to especially acknowledge the contributions of the late Dr. Halbert Fillinger of Philadelphia, aka “Homicide Hal.” One of America ’s great forensic pathologists, he was the old lion of the Vidocq Society and his presence pervades this book.
I’d like to thank all the members of the Vidocq Society (VSMs) for their help and forbearance as I watched them investigate murders and chatted with them over lunch. Being in the Murder Room for an afternoon of cuisine and crime is like attending a symphony orchestra, and this book is the story of all VSMs. I’d especially like to thank the society’s chaplain, Bill Kelly, a retired Philadelphia Police Department latent fingerprinter, and Joe McGillen, the retired Philadelphia medical examiner’s investigator, for their recollections of the Boy in the Box; Frank Friel, the Philadelphia homicide captain and police chief of Bensalem, Pennsylvania, for his memories of numerous cases and police investigation in general; Philadelphia captain of detectives Laurence Nodiff for his recollections of the Marie Noe case; California cold-case investigator Richard Walton, for taking me through his reconstruction of a 1920s murder; former U.S. Customs agent Frank Dufner for his remarkable memory of numerous federal cases; document examiner Robert J. Phillips for his frank discussions about JFK’s handwriting; Arizona forensic pathologist Dr. Richard Froede for describing his autopsy of CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley, kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by Hamas and Islamic jihadists.
Thanks to former FBI agent and VSM Robert Ressler, and Washington State investigator and forensic professor Robert Keppel. These two prominent members of the first American generation of criminal profilers, colleagues of Richard Walter, gave generously of their time and insights into crime assessment and profiling. VSM Steve Stoud, a profiler with the Pennsylvania State Police, put into clear perspective Walter’s theories in the history of profiling-and Walter himself, to the furthest extent humanly possible.
The story of the Vidocq Society was lodged mostly in memory and oral history, but the efforts of the society’s former publicity director Richard Lavinthal, English professor Weinberg, science officer Dr. Jolie Bookspan, and her husband, Paul Plevakas, have led to publication of the excellent quarterly Vidocq Society Journal, now converted to digital format by editor Plevakas. It was an important source for the book.
In many hours of interviews, Jim Dunn shared with me his passion and years of effort to find the killers of his son, Scott, culminating in Jim’s relationship with Richard Walter that secured justice. Homicide detective Keith Hall, now with the Onondaga County (New York) sheriff ’s office, was an important source of his work on the Case of the Missing Face with the Manlius (New York) Police Department, as was officer Thaddeus Maine. Homicide detective Tal English of the Lubbock (Texas) Police Department gave invaluable help on the Dunn case. Amateur investigators Robert Mancini of Ohio and Mike Rodelli of New Jersey, both mentored by Richard Walter, shared their research on two of America’s most notorious unsolved serial killer cases-the Butcher of Cleveland and the Zodiac Killer, respectively.